A TRIBUTE TO PICASSO, born October 25, 1881

Probably the most famous artist of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso almost single-handedly created modern art. Famous for his pioneering role in Cubism, Picasso continued to develop his art, and it might be said that Picasso lived several artistic lifetimes.

Born in 1881 of an artist, Jose Ruiz, and Maria Picasso, the young Picasso took the rarer name of his mother. At the age of 14, he completed the one-month qualifying examination of the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona in one day. He then studied in Madrid.

From 1901 to 1904, known as his Blue Period because of his blue paintings, Picasso made frequent stays in Paris, studying the masterworks at the Louvre.

During 1905 and 1906, he painted in subtle pinks and greys, in what was known as his Pink Period.

In 1907, Picasso met Georges Braque, the other leading figure of the Cubist movement. Cubism was equally the creation of Picasso and Braque. The 1920's saw Picasso painting in Cubist, Classical and Surreal modes, and sculpting in wrought iron.

In 1937, the northern Basque village of Guernica was pounded with bombs by the Luftwaffe. Sixteen hundred civilians were killed or wounded as they ran from the crumbling buildings.

Picasso was stunned by the stark black and white photographs in the newspapers. Appalled and enraged, he began his great anti-war painting, Guernica.

Representing the horror of the massacre with a jumble of tortured images, Guernica challenges our notions of warfare as heroic and is modern art's most powerful anti-war statement.

During the Second World War, Picasso lived in France where he continued painting tragic themes with distorted figures. In 1945 he received a commission for decorating the interior of the Antibes cultural centre. There, he developed his White Period, painting landscapes, still lifes and mythological subjects.

Picasso died at the ripe age of ninety-two.

~ Azlan Adnan

N.B. This is an abridged version of a much longer article submitted for publication to the New Straits Times.